Somewhere along the way, we got the idea that we are supposed to think in perfectly neat single-file lines. We don't. We think in millions of idea bubbles. Sometimes, all those thought bubbles overwhelm us and we just have to let them pop. Don't hold it in. Speak. Be heard. You have a voice, too.

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Saturday, December 14, 2013

The Things We Think but Do not Say

"Sticks and stones may
break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Have you ever heard that one? I did. I grew up saying it; in
fact, in middle school it became something of a mantra for me. And I tried so
hard to believe it. “Their words won’t
hurt me.” But those words did hurt me…a lot. The mean words, the shoves
into lockers, the jokes about my clothes: they all hurt. I didn’t care that my
clothes came from low-end stores, but for some reason my classmates did.

I came from a happy two-parent home. No, we did not have a
lot of money. There were five children in my family, so there were a lot of
expenses. Buying the Izod shirt with the alligator or the perfect Colors by Benetton
sweater, the real Keds shoes or Guess jeans was simply out of the question. I
wore a lot of hand-me-downs, clothes from K-mart, and clothes from Target,
shoes from Payless. I was a Weasley in a school full of Malfoys. My clothes
were imitations of those coveted items.

We didn’t discuss problems at home. We have never been a
communicative family. Ignore it, that was our motto, and we were good at it.
Turn a blind eye. Live in a bubble. So when I began having these problems in
middle school, it never occurred to me to talk to anyone about them. Why would
I?

Confessions of a
Middle-School Loser

1. “Friendship pins” (safety pins + beads) were all the rage
in school. While kids were exchanging them and were positively dripping in
friendship pin chains and decorating their shoes, no one ever gave one to me. I
had to make my own so no one would see how friendless I was.

2. The girls’ PE locker room door opened outward. As I was
opening it to enter for class, I bumped a boy on his way to wherever he was going.
“Watch out, ya fat cow” are words forever burned into my brain, snarled at me
by this wretched boy.

3. The crazy boy in school decided he like-liked me (we
probably don’t use that word now…we’d use something like “mentally ill”…but
trust me, he was crazy). Word of this quickly spread and everyone somehow
“knew” we were “going together”. He would call my house and say, “Hello, Karen.
You know who this is.” That’s it. He wouldn’t say anything else, just sit on
the line and breathe. It was creepy as shit.

4. There was a boy on the bus we rode who would touch me.
When I wore shorts or a skirt/dress, he’d rub my legs “to see if they had
stubble”. Occasionally, he’d grab other places, just because he could. I asked
him to stop, but no one made him stop because he was a popular kid. I missed
the bus on purpose a few times because I knew he was on it. I’ve never told
anyone that before.

5. In 8th grade history, one of our in-class
projects was to have a partner trace our silhouettes off the overhead projector
(we then would complete the project at home in some sort of creative fashion.
I’m sure this had a purpose…). Although “partner” implies 2, and there was an
even number of people in the class, I had no partner. The soc’s clumped up
together until one of them took pity on me and whipped me out an outline of my head.

6. The “soc” boys nicknamed me K-Mart in the 6th
grade because of my clothes. The nickname lasted throughout middle school. It
was not a term of endearment.

School was torturous. Despite the fact that I had always
been a good student, I dreaded going to school. What was someone going to say
today? Was he going to be on the bus?
I never told anyone about any of these things. No one had ever told me that I
was allowed to say the things that bothered me, that I was allowed to talk
about my problems. Maybe that’s some kind of common sense that I was supposed
to know, but I didn’t. When you grow up with a certain model, that is what you
learn. I learned to keep quiet.

A High-School
Revelation

In high school, I learned I have a voice. This was brand new
information for me. My freshman English teacher, Diane Skelton, changed my
life. She not only taught us English, she gave us ownership of ourselves. It
was absolutely astounding. I had many things to say, and suddenly I knew that I
was allowed to say them. If someone bothered me, I could (I could!) tell him to stop. And I learned
that I knew how to write. My love of the written word has been unceasing. People
often talk about “that” teacher, that one teacher who taught them something
specific, or who saved them from doing something stupid. Mrs. Skelton was both
of those things for me.

A Career Defined, A Voice Uplifted

I’m an English professor now. I get to wallow to my heart’s
content in the written word for a living. The absolute best part of my job is
letting my students know that they own every experience in their lives. It
doesn’t matter if sometime in the past someone said, “don’t tell.” Forget that.
It is their life, their experience. Good or bad, it belongs to them and they
can write about it, talk about it, or act it out in interpretive dance if they
want to. They have a voice and it deserves to be heard. Everyone has a story to
tell.

We have to get over this idea that we shouldn’t talk about
our problems, that we have to just “suck it up”. When we talk about them, we
realize that there are others who have the same problems. It’s often the
loneliness and the isolation that cause our problems to balloon. When we find
someone to share them with, they become far more manageable. My eldest daughter
is in the seventh grade this year. It’s tough. Thankfully, she knows she can
come to me with her problems. Some have been doozies, while others have been
small that-crap-is-still-going-on? pettiness. The point is, she knows she can talk to me. She knows she has a voice.

I’ve been reliving my nightmare middle school years lately
because I've been helping my daughter swim those waters. She's realizing how
twisted middle-school relationships become (is this person really my friend? Or
only when I'm looking at her?) and it's so hard to watch that happen. I didn't
realize that when your kids go through middle school that means you have to go
through it all again too. It's not easier the second time. I know more words
now - and some really good ones - but I'm still not allowed to use them on
those little pishers who hurt my daughter.

2 comments:

I'm sad I didn't know some of the things revealed here, I thought I knew everything about you. But a lot of that you know I went right through with you, and you know I feel your pain. So much of it is where we grew up, and then there's just the fact that kids are mean. But you'll always be my homecoming date and I love you :)